“The potential reach of the scam is very troubling since one of the hijacked channels that began promoting the scams has 1.26 million subscribers,” the researchers said in the blog. “Other instances show a subscriber count of over 700,000 and in the lower ranges of 100,000.”

Moreover, fake claims about Musk’s political affiliation may have undesirable effects on the ongoing presidential campaign. While there’s no direct reference in any of the fake videos, some channel descriptions have taken it a step further. “Elon Musk plans to provide about $45 million a month to a new political committee supporting former US leader Donald Trump as part of the presidential campaign #Tesla #Musk #Trump,” one of the descriptions reads.

Bitdefender researchers have identified five malicious domains associated with this campaign and appropriated their anti-phishing and anti-fraud tools to detect and block them. Additionally, the Romanian cybersecurity watchdog has made a few recommendations to guard against such scams including scrutiny of QR codes with too-good-to-be-true crypto offers, checking YouTube channels for suspecting giveaways and telltale signs like missing or deleted videos and closed comment sections.